CURIOUS WEDNESDAY // Jazz Age

When I first moved to New York I was excited to discover all the Jazz cafes my former neighbor and jazz musician had told me about. However, all my searches came to dead ends at the entrances of large venues charging $30 covers for traveling musicians far from native to this city. My second round of searches brought me inside of numerous interiors of covert speakeasies full to the brim with expensive cocktail lists, hand carved ice cubes, and the worst talent if any I have witnessed to date. Apparently the rise of cocktail/mixology culture in NYC was the fall of non-commercialized entertainment.

This seems to ring true with much of the entertainment industry these days. Where I can walk into Cafe Orwell and hear vocals on a loop, recorded 5minutes prior to the performance, played in conjunction with a piano chord, and a haunting vocal melody I still hear the ghost of in my ears.

Somewhere between hand written signs, hand glued album covers and bags of dirt at the merch table, the industry has replanted it's roots across from the "green" gym sprawling across the top floor of what might be an old meat packing factory.

While traveling to Chicago and LA I follow scant, wind blown, breadcrumb trails left by bored natives and passers by, to find gold at the The Green Mill and The Edison. Yet where I call home, I feel severed from the sixth sense of exploration and intuition. Maybe I should take up midnight walks through Harlem instead of 6am internet trolling for events.

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Curious Wednesday is a weekly column written and driven by the personality of Ms. Marquise discussing the insides of her head in relation to things around her. New topics can be found on the Bushwick Daily every Wednesday, while you can find her productions listed on False Aristocracy.